004 STAR TREK: Spock's Ultimate Truths
by Dan Bivens
Summary: Let us look in on Captain Spock, in between starship commands, as he addresses an Academy class in regards to ALL he'd learned in regards to the Ultimate Truths of the Universe and Beyond. With a visit by Q! BTW: I HAVE SOMEHOW LOST CHAPTER ONE...SORRY
1. Chapter 2

**SPOCK'S ULTIMATE TRUTHS**

By: Dan Bivens

Chapter 2

"The Truer Nature of Quantum Activity"

"Before we go any further," said Spock while walking about the entire lecture area before the stadium-seated cadets and former fellow officers, Admiral Kirk and Dr. McCoy, with hands folded behind his board-straight back. "Might I assume that you have acquainted yourselves with the previously suggested logs from two prior starship missions codenamed 'Crisis on Colony Alpha V' and 'Missing Time'?"

As the seated students in cadet colors replied in the affirmative via overlapping voices and head nods, Spock continued, "Very well, then. Let us concentrate, in this first half-hour, upon the exact nature of Quantum Activity. Also, as per previous explanations in the logs from the aforementioned 'Crisis on Colony Alpha V', one of the three, according to the supremely evolved energy entities still referred to as Thasians, joined 'Fabrics'. The known for centuries Fabric of Space-Time. The recently validated Fabric of Quantum Activity as well as the originally overlooked Fabric of Life-Consciousness. All three of which, as you should already realize from your studies of said starship logs, coexist within the vastness of this universe and countless other universes."

"Wow," grumbled McCoy in a hushed aside to Admiral Kirk, "I am so glad you talked me into this."

"Shhh."

"Now, the first aspect of all things quantum," Spock said as holographic illustrations of such seemingly solidified in the emptiness to the Vulcan's left, "is the misunderstood mystery of an electron's illogical leaping about with no rhyme or reason. Until now, none were quite certain why this was the case and such is why transporters, from the first used tentatively by starships to what is currently considered commonplace, invariably rely upon the Heisenberg Compensator."

The entirety of the Starfleet Cadets, Humans and humanoid, nodded noticeably and agreed amongst themselves to such a well-known and necessary aspect of an incredibly important part of a fully functional transporter on not only starships and starbases. But virtually all vessels representative of planets of the Federation.

"Wake me up when Spock says anything at all new, will ya?" quietly quipped McCoy causing Kirk to grin gregariously.

He sorely missed those long lost years spent together on the self-same starship as what would be called, in McCoy's quaint colloquialism, "one big happy family", as Spock next activated the holographic illustrations of illusive electrons.

Literally popping in and out of Reality in a decidedly surreal fashion, even as a Vulcan Cadet named Sorek, sitting in the second row, languidly lifted a hand to staidly state his understanding of said subatomic actions.

"Yes, Sorek," Spock said in stoic identification of the youth sporting similar slanted brow and pointy-tipped ears amidst skin simultaneously pallid and green-tinged.

Standing, folding his own hands behind his board-straight back, Sorek said, "The fact that electrons defy logic by seemingly disappearing and reappearing rather than following some semblance of subatomic paths has been a more or less accepted precept of quantum mechanics for more than three centuries. Considering not only the Terran theorems and measurements as well as Vulcan scientific considerations about…"

"But, Sorek," calmly cut in Captain Spock to all the Cadets, not only the Vulcan, "does Terran theory and subsequent observation, as well as other such suppositions, take into account the Thasian Truths as they apply to alternate universes and sub-subatomic singularities inside said electrons?"

Suddenly, the collection of Cadets fell into silence over such a seemingly improbable possibility…

As do two seen-it-all ex-starship superior officers seated in the uppermost row overlooking the classroom wherein lectured Captain Spock…

"Did Spock just say what I think he said?" asked a suddenly curious McCoy of an equally inquisitive Kirk.

"I'm afraid you did, Bones. Spock's saying that…"

"As this holo-illustration shall demonstrate," Spock said as three-dimensional displays denoted an incredibly inconsequential point-singularity at the very heart of a single solitary electron. "Such singularities, more appropriately referred to as 'yachto-point black holes'--that is 10 to the negative-24--turn out to actually exist in the centermost domains of all electrons. Which is why, as this holo-illustration shows, an electron can coexist, for all of a pica-second, in more than one universe at a time. Thus professedly popping in and out of subatomic existence."

As the murmuring amongst Cadets, some accepting of Spock's Thasian-obtained "Truth" and some most definitely not, swelled and swirled, Sorek stood and spoke with uncommon Vulcan skepticism.

"Sir, scientists on several very old worlds of the Federation have studied and postulated in respect to the elusive electrons and none have ever presented such an illogical…"

"All things, Sorek," injected Spock seriously, "are 'illogical' until such time as their inherent enigmas are completely presented or exposed. Once studied and accepted, any scientific disclosure, no matter how improbable, must be adequately acknowledged. Just because it flies in the face of previous erudition is irrelevant. Such is a fact according to consciousnesses that are considered supreme. But it is a new fact and, as such, must be passed along for further reflection. Any questions?"

As Sorek reseated himself, even as more muttering made its way through the gathering, it became clear the Cadets did, indeed, accede to Spock's Truth.

"Very well, then," Spock said even as the holographic illustrations shifted from the impossibly small to something more on the order of the truly Cosmic. "Now, let us discuss the previous viewpoint as it pertains to planetary progress about stars containing impossibly immense globes orbiting far too close to and too quickly around them."

"See, Bones?" Kirk quietly emphasized to McCoy. "I told you you'd learn something."

"I'll admit," McCoy remarked only loud enough for Kirk's ears, "that was definitely a new revelation. No one would've ever believed 'black holes' could be so inconceivably tiny…even though the strange actions of in-and-out electrons do make more sense under such an explanation!…but just what the hell could Spock have found out from his mind meld with immaterial Thasians to put centuries-old stellar-planetary development viewpoints on their proverbial ears?"

"Keep listening," whispered a bemused Admiral Kirk, "and you might just find out."

END OF CHAPTER 2


	2. Chapter 3

**SPOCK'S ULTIMATE TRUTHS**

By: Dan Bivens

Chapter 3

"What Makes Gargantuan Planets Spiral In?"

With holographic illustrations seemingly dominating one-half of the lecture region before the stadium-seated rows of curious Cadets and two friends and fellow officers, former officer for one!, from Spock's previous years on board various starships christened ENTERPRISE…

"As you will note here," Spock said as an enormous planet, larger even than Jupiter, "this immense gas giant, at some cosmological moment following its solidification as a planet, eventually spirals in about certain stars, such as 51 Pegasi. Until, in time, it is so close that it orbits around said sun in mere days. Back in the 21st Century of Earth history, for instance, some dozen or so stars were determined to harbor orbiting gas giants extremely close and unreasonably fast."

As Spock expected, several Cadets, mostly Human, shot hands into the air for permission to speak on the subject. Spock pointed to one particular person of Human ancestry…

"Cadet Johannson?"

Cadet Sophia Johannson, Human female barely old enough to be a Starfleet student, stood and said, "Sir, it had been established by 2007, Old Earth Calendar, that such spiraling-in orbits were, for some inexplicable purpose, common around some stars while those with rocky worlds, like Earth or Vulcan, did not have such…"

"What would you say, Ms. Johannson," Spock asked icily yet certainly, "if I were to tell you that such was something all star systems started as in regards to planetary progress in its overall development? Even Earth and Vulcan?"

Once again, not only the Cadets attending but Admiral Kirk and Dr. McCoy, murmured and muttered in direct disagreement. Something said aloud by Cadet Sophia Johannson…

"That's impossible, sir. If that had happened in the cases of currently rocky world orbited suns, like Earth's and Vulcan's, there would, in fact, be no such celestial evolutions leading to…"

"What if I were to subsequently explicate my point by telling you all," Spock shot a passionless glance to Kirk and McCoy a mere moment before finishing. "That this was simply a never-before-formulated Truth in regards to normal cosmological life-spans of a star and its ever-growing collection of planetary bodies. First, the impossibly massive gas giants grow then spiral in to strangely close/fast orbital trajectories."

"Spock must be joking," scoffed McCoy only for Kirk to hear. "Our astronomers and physicists couldn't possibly have missed something like that."

"Nor," Kirk commented quietly, "could the Vulcans. Still…Spock is speaking on what his psychic linking with Thasians had imparted to his mind."

"Think about it," Spock said a little louder so as to stop opposing discussions. "As the billions of years gradually pass from stellar 'birth' to the eventual development of a true solar system…from too-immense, tightly orbiting super-planets…which gradually break apart because of such orbital trajectories…to, inevitably, allow for said solar system to completely coalesce out of the cosmic chaos. Observe…"

The holographic illustrations steadily demonstrate such as formerly faithless Cadets come to comprehend this Spock Truth, including Kirk and McCoy…

"Now," said Spock as he gestured toward the three-dimensional moving images floating freely before them all, "I believe you fully understand such without further oration."

"Wait-a-minute," quipped McCoy with a curious scowl that spoke seeming volumes in direct regards to his begrudging respect for Spock. "Did he just say he didn't need to keep talking and talking and talking about something?"

"Guess miracles can happen, Bones," Kirk wisecracked in return. "Even to a Vulcan."

"What else did you learn from your mind meld with the Thasians, sir?" asked a blue-skinned Bolian without actually standing as did Sorek and Johannson. His interest immediately mirrored by all the other Cadets.

"I think I've already answered such," Spock said stiffly, "in my logs, but I can add that the so-called 'dark energy' Earth and others have pondered and debated is directly related to the Fabric of Life-Consciousness. Especially considering such immortal energy-beings as not only the Thasians. But, as those of the ENTERPRISE came to comprehend during our first five-year mission…Organians, Metrons, Delta Theta III entity, Pah-Wraith, 'Prophets' or wormhole aliens, as well as an unknown number of others yet to be encountered."

"What about," sheepishly asked a Caldonian whose huge head and height was such that even sitting he was taller than all the others, "the 'dark matter'? Might that be 'black holes' as Humans had dubbed them?"

"Precisely, Cadet Leyav," answered Spock with a self-certain nod. "But also such things as clouds of antimatter and neutron stars. And this doesn't even take into account the 'black hole' related crossing of other universal Realities with our own. They, too, account for a certain amount of both 'dark energy' and 'dark matter'."

At that self-same moment, just outside Starfleet Academy and Starfleet Headquarters…

Something especially strange was emerging from such cross-universal electron-related existence.

Something mundane in its own parallel Reality, yet quite magical, it seemed, to such as our Reality.

Just one more energy-being similar to such stated by Spock during his oration of Ultimate Truths gleaned from a mind meld with Thasians so many years ago.

A being as pompous as he was powerful. As mischievous as he was manipulative.

Someone who would come to be called…

Q!

END OF CHAPTER 3


	3. Chapter 4

**SPOCK'S ULTIMATE TRUTHS**

By: Dan Bivens

Chapter 4

"Truth According to Q"

"Starfleet Headquarters," quietly commented Q as he stood in its midst while visually scanning it and the totality of Starfleet officers in crimson coats, multicolored turtlenecks, over black pants-and-boots. "It would seem I'm dressed slightly out of style for the times."

With a thought, Q caused a burst of pure white light to encompass his person so as to instantly alter his 24th Century two-tone jumpsuit uniform into the self-same worn by those in the latter part of the 23rd Century. With his turtleneck being that of snow white, as such was the Command color.

Not to mention the Fleet Admiral rank pin and black-and-gold sleeve stripe.

If Q had been entering the Federation Council, he would've whipped up something similar to what the Federation President would've worn.

"Halt," said a security sentinel with Lieutenant's rank on crimson coat and dark green turtleneck. "I'm sorry, sir, but I have to check your identification before allowing you in. We have some VIPs and Security has been enhanced for the day."

"VIPs, you say?" Q queried with a half-smirk as he next gestured toward the man and caused him to disappear in a swift flash of bright-white energy. "Perhaps the Lieutenant will find standing guard in the restroom more suited to his 'talents'."

With that, Q continued on as lesser officers saluted what they truly believed to be a Fleet Admiral paying the Command and Academy centers an unscheduled visit.

"I could come to quite like such subservient attention," he said with a waggish grin. "Now…let's go meet the VIPs of this century."

"And now, Cadets," Spock said as he was finally, as far as McCoy was concerned, rapping up the lecture of Truths, "to sum up…"

Suddenly, every single young Cadet seemingly disappeared in a plenitude of bright-white flashes…

"What the devil?" McCoy scowled even as Kirk quickly leapt to his booted feet.

Spock's puzzled expression merged with the man he called "Captain" for more than five years.

"Fascinating."

Before Admiral Kirk could vault into action mode and before Dr. McCoy could try to issue sage advice against such sudden moves…

"No need to concern yourselves with these Starfleet officers-to-be," Q quipped as he suddenly materialized amidst a burst of brilliance a scant meter from Captain Spock. "They haven't gone anywhere. I've just turned them into 'action figures'."

Utterly perplexed over the usage of such an antiquated term, Kirk and McCoy quickly made their way down the steps leading from uppermost row to the lecture level. As they did, they noticed that, in the seats recently occupied by Cadets, there were now four or five inch tall multi-articulated icons of those that sat there seconds earlier.

McCoy even picked up one of these so-called "action figures": the tall Caldonian next to the blue-skinned Bolian. A perfect representation in plastic. Just utterly lifeless.

"What the hell did you do to these kids?" McCoy managed angrily even as Kirk continued to descend the steps with an expression of impending dispute, physically if such was necessary, with this stranger.

"All right. Who are you? How did you do this? And why are you here?"

Three rapid-fire queries from a man who'd seen stranger stuff during his exceptionally long years of starship command. A man more than ready to do whatever was necessary to force this person to reverse his impressively powerful manipulation of matter.

"You may call me Q, Captain Kirk."

"Admiral Kirk."

Amused by his mistake, Q quickly corrected, "Oh, yes, I see your rank insignia on that pretty little red coat. My apologies."

Before more could be uttered, even as McCoy, at last, stood next to Kirk, Q looked at the always logical and passionless half-Human/half-Vulcan currently standing straight and tall with hands folded behind that board-straight back again.

"You are the Captain, aren't you, uh, Spock, is it?"

Spock spoke as stoically as always as he properly pointed out, "A being with such cosmic abilities, Q, would not be unaware of such insignificant aspects concerning rank. I suspect you are amusing yourself at our expense. And the expense of innocent students attending…"

"Attending your oration of Ultimate Truths?" Q interrupted with an arrogant grin. "I, too, found your vocalization of cosmic candor 'entertaining', Captain Spock. But do you really believe these mental midgets…or should I say 'cerebral dwarves'?…are ready to learn the accurate aspects of Space and Time and Alternate Realities? Let alone the nature of the Fabric of Life-Consciousness. Yes, I took the time to peruse your logs regarding such things so quaintly codenamed as 'Crisis on Colony Alpha V' and 'Missing Time'. I dearly love how this century uses such poetic titles for identifying entire starship logs. In another century or so the labeling is boring, indeed."

"Where are you from, Q?" McCoy asked suddenly, still holding a couple of Cadets-turned-into-action figures in his hands.

"I am from…the Q Continuum, good Doctor," Q stated succinctly and with a self-certain smile. "Oh, I forgot…you're 'retired'. Yes, like that will last."

"Q Continuum?" Kirk repeated as puzzlement replaced pending provocation.

"Is that the name of another universal Reality?" coolly asked Spock a single second after.

"You could say that," Q said mysteriously before further expounding on the subject. "To be more accurate…and you'll be happy to know, Captain Spock, that you are the first humanoid in this universe to be told…the Q Continuum and all the Qs therein actually stands for 'quantum'."

Lifting a single slanted brow, Spock said, "I see. So you are saying, Q, that your Reality exists specifically in the 'yacto-point black holes' in the…"

"Yes, yes," impatiently injected Q, "in the absolute center of those ever illusive electrons your species and others have so perpetually pondered. Not that each electron contains a new Reality…Q Continuum is quite alone in that. However, would you be at all intrigued if I told you that all the so-called 'psychics' or 'prophets' or whatever you people label those with super-sensitive mental patterns, were, in actuality, 'in touch', if you will, with all other Realities and all other potential existences? Including your cosmic doppelgangers living out lives in said alternate universes? Thanks to these 'yacto-point black holes' causing countless electrons to pop in and out of every universe and every Reality. Just as the common connectivity of the Fabric of Life-Consciousness accounts for any sort of telepathic contacts between even the most ordinary of life-forms."

Spock simply said, "No", in passionless response.

"Yeah, we've heard all of that before, friend," McCoy almost muttered, then angrily added. "So did you come here to toy with these Cadets and repeat part of what Spock discovered via his 'non-tactile mind meld' with the Thasians several long years ago?"

"As a matter of fact, Leonard," said Q in semi-amusement. "Can I call you Leonard? I've actually come to play. I've grown tired of the ENTERPRISE-D in the 24th Century and that pompous Captain Jean Luc-Picard, so…"

"Did you say," cut in a curious Kirk, "the ENTERPRISE-D?"

Q could psychically see a sudden rise of raw emotions within the mind of Admiral James T. Kirk and smirked somewhat sinisterly.

"Oh, James, I can see that you will be a lot more fun than Jean-Luc. Shall we play?"

END OF CHAPTER 4


	4. Chapter 5

**SPOCK'S ULTIMATE TRUTHS**

By: Dan Bivens

Chapter 5/Conclusion

"Q's Power Play"

Before resistance from Captain Spock, Admiral James T. Kirk, or Dr. Leonard H. McCoy could be adequately demonstrated…

"What the hell?" exclaimed McCoy. Basically voicing what even Spock experienced in regards to suddenly finding themselves in some limbo of bright white light.

"Where have you taken us, Q?" angrily asked Kirk, his fists still tightly balled at his sides.

"This would seem to be some in-between universal existence," Spock said with a hum of mental notation of Nothingness.

"Nonexistence would be more accurate, Captain Spock," Q was quick to correct. "I have brought us to a point not only between-and-apart from cosmic corporeal Reality…including my Q-Continuum or 'quantum' universe. I thought this would be a much better place to…play."

"What the hell's all this talk of 'playing'?" McCoy loudly prodded the super-powerful Q still dressed in similar Command-grade crimson coat and white turtleneck. Just with a Fleet Admiral's ranking. "For God's sake, man, you can clearly do anything! Why the hell would someone so impossibly powerful want to 'play'?"

In swift answer, Q simply solidified around them the scene from McCoy's past upon a planet now known to be a "playground" for extremely evolved civilizations. A place where whatever one thought was swiftly made real via super-advanced synthetic creations.

"How soon you forget, Doctor," Q said with a sigh even as a Dr. McCoy in blue and black from many years ago was aghast at the sight of something straight out of Alice in Wonderland. "As your then-Captain Kirk pointed out when the Keeper appeared…"

The apparently living scenery swiftly switched to a battered and bruised Captain James T. Kirk correctly realizing, "The more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play."

With less than a twitch of two fingers, everything returned to the Nothingness in White it was.

"What sort of 'play' did you have in mind, Q?" Kirk asked as his fists relaxed a little to match his more mitigating tone.

"I rather thought we could relive every single instant of excitement and intellectual evolution experienced by the three of you," Q said suddenly as a grandiose gesturing sent all four far into a mutually important past starting with…

The events at the very outset of Captain Kirk's first official introduction into the truly cosmic…

Events involving a much more alien appearing Lieutenant-Commander Spock sporting the self-same tan tunic as Kirk even as the Captain's close comrade from a pre-Command life took the form of: Lt.-Commander Gary Mitchell.

The man who, due to an accidental energy encounter at the edge of the galaxy, was transformed from Human to a god.

"Gary," Admiral Kirk breathed heavily as remembered emotional pain assaulted his seeming soul as the fast fleeting, though still real, episode played out to its inevitable end.

When Captain Kirk, after fighting it out with Gary Mitchell immediately prior to his powers return on Delta Vega, used a phaser rifle to bring down at least a metric ton of solid stone on top of the mutated man.

To add psychological salt to Kirk's raw wounds, Q skipped several years ahead to quite literally let them all know…

"As you can see, dear Admiral Kirk, your 'friend' did not die underneath all that heavy rock debris," Q stated as such was visibly viewed by the trio of tight-knit friends-for-Life. "How you could conceive such about someone mutated into 'god-hood' is beyond belief. Gary Mitchell gradually died over the passage of time spent practically crushed, physically speaking, beneath that tonnage. And you'll be 'happy' to know…he died cursing your very name."

Though Admiral Kirk kept such to himself, even McCoy could tell that he was saddened and suffused with self-guilt. Quite likely more emotion than necessary to have prevented Captain Kirk's decision on Stardate 1313.3.

Which, Captain Spock certainly understood, would've loosened an impossible-to-stop mutated Human upon an otherwise innocent universe…

"You are quite correct in what you are thinking, Captain Spock," Q suddenly said after reading Spock's conscious considerations. "No one in your universe would've survived had Admiral Kirk not taken the actions he did, in fact, take. You should take some solace in that, at least, Admiral."

Kirk considered telling Q to "go to Hell", but feared the all-powerful personage might actually take them there. Had Spock not explained that, due to an infinitude of universal Realities, that at least one of them would be hellish?

"As to you, Dr. McCoy," Q continued as Bright White Nothingness returned, "Retired. What was that moment of most painful…?"

"It won't work, Q," McCoy said swiftly with a deep-seated scowl. "Spock's half-brother, Sybok, showed me my 'pain'. I've since come to terms with having to assist in the passing of my father just before a damned cure came out. You are evidently not as omniscient as you seem to think."

"Au contraire, Mon Docteur," quipped Q as a gesture via a single solitary forefinger instantaneously altered Bright-White Nothingness into…

"Sweet, Jesus. Not this."

"Natira," another Yonadan pleaded with a lovelorn lady who, years after arriving upon the planet pre-designated generations ago as the new homeworld now known as New Yonada. "You have awaited your love for far too long. If this McCoy were coming…he would have certainly done so by now. You cannot waste your years…"

"They are my years to waste," sternly said a bittersweet Natira to the younger Yonadan next to her gray-haired Self. "I have pledged my love…my life…to Leonard H. McCoy. If I must die gazing up into the night sky for his starship to approach. So be it."

"No…Natira," McCoy muttered as tears welled within his blue eyes even as this supposedly realistic living image conjured by Q allowed her own tears to tumble down the wrinkles wrought by Time.

A Time that should have stayed in that painful past, but which was once again alive thanks to the sadistic desires of a super-powerful entity from the quantum heart of an electron.

"Shame on you, McCoy," tormented Q, "to leave that lovely lady believing you would live up to your parting promise to meet her and her people upon reaching their world. You know…she died brokenhearted."

"Go to Hell!" McCoy grumbled in grief-fueled growing rage. Barely held in check by the touch of a close compeer named James T. Kirk.

"Now, now, Leonard," warned Q with a wag of a finger, "let's not tempt me to take you to a Hell Universe. And last but seldom least…Spock."

"Do your worst, Q," Spock said staidly. "Since I have no emotion, you cannot 'damage' me as you have my two friends."

"No emotion?" Q curtly asked. "Now, that isn't exactly true, Captain Spock. Vulcans have emotions…they just keep them buried underneath intense intellectual control. Making every event, no matter how trivial, a variable of an equation where all aspects are considered, analyzed, weighed…then you come to some emotionless decision in how to behave. How to respond to 'stimuli'. To anything and everything. Yes?"

Inclining his head, pointy-tipped ears twitching, single slanted brow lifting, prior to replying pointedly, "Yes. We do."

"But, being half-Human," Q continued impishly with a smirk, "you especially examine every little thing before permitting yourself to speak or act. But, as a young boy, such was not only highly improbable…your half-brother would, during an attempt to assist in your development of logic, suffer the aftermath."

It became clear to Kirk and McCoy, both grappling with emotional elements of their own painful pasts, that Spock was, most assuredly, suddenly confronted with one of his own.

Something all would see as Q conjured up that past, seemingly lost to Time and buried deep in a Vulcan subconscious, at a point when Spock was but six years old…

"Spock," a slightly older Sybok, from a far different marriage between Sarek and a Vulcan Princess prior to shamefully, some would say, letting a period of pon farr form a bond between Vulcan and Human. "I know how the Vulcan children treat you. It is terrible. Shameful. Perhaps, younger brother, I might mitigate and mediate such shameful emotions via a mind meld. I know you have not yet mastered such…but I have. Let me…help you."

Kirk and McCoy suddenly understood the reason Spock never mentioned Sybok, his half-brother, until the Laughing Vulcan, as many came to call him, boarded the ENTERPRISE during the starting Stardate 8454.1 of said mission log-codenamed "The Final Frontier".

There before them, as much a moment in Living Time as anything else, they watched two young Vulcan half-brothers engage in a mind meld meant to assist in Spock's more rapid development of logic.

Though it did work, making it far easier for a half-Human/half-Vulcan to complete his intensive training and ignore the prejudices of fellow Vulcan children, it came at a terrible price…

"Ha, ha, hahahaha!"

It so twisted the previously perfected mental patterns of Sybok that he would be considered "crazed" and basically disowned by his species and planet.

Leading him to one day attempt to "take away pain" from emotional men and women, including Kirk and McCoy, in order to form a following of quasi-religious proportions that, inevitably, led to his demise on a curious world at the very center of the galaxy. A place where an errant "God" existed and attempted to con itself away from its cosmological prison.

As had been the case so many decades ago, guilt, yet another completely illogical emotion shoved deep down by an equation-thinking Spock, reared itself inside the Human half of the current Captain.

"Ahhh," Q said as he swiftly shifted the four of them from a featureless Nowhere to wind up where they started in an Academy classroom. "It would seem, Spock, that you are not as 'emotionless' as you claim."

"Leave him alone, you—"

"No, Admiral," Captain Spock said as he stiffened in his struggle to reacquire the sweet sterility of logic. "It is sometimes important to remember where we were…in order to appreciate where we are."

"Oooo, deep," Q almost laughed, then prepared to pop out of this Reality as easily as he'd popped in. "Before I go…let me leave you with another seeming impossibility to ponder…"

Whether they wanted to or not, Kirk, McCoy, and Spock suddenly listened with extreme interest for a Truth by Q…

"While you are here living your lives, there is someone in another Reality writing what he believes to be a simple story. In other words other worlds truly live quite close to stories seemingly made up in someone's mind. Think about it. Taa-taa!"

Suddenly, the sound of deeply puzzled Cadets came the self-same microsecond that Q disappeared in a flash of bright-white. No doubt returning to his Reality within the heart of a "yacto-point black hole" in the midst of a single fleeting electron.

Spock, Kirk, and McCoy looked about at the crowded rows overlooking the lecture area wherein stood this trio of heroic officers of Starfleet and the Federation. It became clear that they knew nothing of the events involved after all of them had been reduced to doll-like "action figures" for as long as it took for the torturous trip taken at the behest of a humanoid called Q.

"Uh, maybe we should go," McCoy managed as embarrassment replaced past shame, "so that Spock, here, can finish clueing in our Cadets to 'Ultimate Truths'."

"Somehow, Bones," Kirk commented with a forced smile, "I just don't think even Spock could explain this."

Lifting a single slanted brow, bringing folded hands once again behind his back while burying the painful past one last time…

"Indeed."

END


End file.
